A few days ago, I wrote a bit about how I connected with Wolverine as a kid. I have a disease that I was diagnosed with as an 8 year old and have been a part of an experimental government research program ever since. Part of that program was monthly MRI and/or CAT scans along with experimental scans. I was injected with all kinds of different substances for these scans and had my blood drawn so many times that the vein in the crook of my right elbow is constantly ready for an IV injection.
Going through this as a kid was rough, but I had two awesome parents that were there for me every step of the way, who showed me how to be tough and how to see the positive in my situation. My Mom, especially, has always been the picture of toughness when it comes to physical pain and taking on medical procedures with a brave face.
But as a developing child, there were certain fears that I didn't want to talk about with my Mom and Dad. The uncertainty of everything was and still is very scary. I didn't know when my illness would take a turn for the worse, or if one of my scans would come back with really bad news and it's only gotten scarier as I get older. Every day I live with the fear that one of the many little growths that I get on or inside my body will be cancerous and in a place that makes it inoperable. I've been told to EXPECT kidney stones at some point in my life, and that my doctors are keeping an eye on a large stone that will hopefully stay where it is; or that the lesions that appeared on my pancreas several years ago have grown and are now cancerous. Scary stuff, but I still maintain a brave face, and fight everyday against all the negative possibilities. While that mentality was instilled by my parents, it was also reinforced by my favorite comic book character, Wolverine.
In issues 48-50, Logan finally starts to get some answers to his mysterious past. Before this arch was released, a mini-series under the Marvel Comics Presents...banner was released; Marvel Comics Presents... Weapon X!
This told the story of how Logan got his adamantium laced skeleton. It's incredibly bloody and violent, and Logan kills A LOT of people; but it ends with more questions. Weapon X escapes into the Canadian Wilderness, and is eventually found by the Hudsons and made an agent of the Canadian government. We still don't know how Logan became a part of the Weapon X project however. That's where these 3 issues come in. They're all about Logan breaking through mental blockers in his head and discovering the real him, that may or may not be a animal-like state of mind.
These issues really give you a look at how much pain Logan went through. In #48 we learn a bit about his past before the Weapon X experiments. We learn that he was a secret agent working alongside his future arch enemy Sabretooth! Both were agents, working undercover in Cuba in 1964, under the aliases El Tigre (Sabretooth) and Emilio Garra (Wolverine).
End of #48 led Logan back to the X-Mansion to get some help from Professor X and Jean Grey. They take a trip into Wolverine's mind, and help him to differentiate between the false memories and the real ones. It's at this point that we learn about the real details of Wolverine's past and that most of his memories were implanted there as part of the Weapon X project. We meet Silverfox, who Logan believes is a lost love of his, but actually turns out to be a plant. He remembers the first time he fought Sabretooth was in a bar in Canada, on his birthday after Sabretooth had "killed" Silverfox. We also learn that the deeper Logan goes into his memories and the more memory implants he takes out, the stronger the possibility of reverting to an animal-like state is likely.
As you can see, he tears off his brown and yellow costume and beats feet on his motorcycle. The end of the issue reveals that Professor Andre and his assistant Hines (the Professor was in charge of the Weapon X project and was behind it all) are still alive and are following Wolverine; pushing him to find SHIVA, a killer robot designed to kill all participants of the Weapon X Project.
This all leads into #50, which is probably my favorite Wolverine issue of all time! First of all, the cover is freaking cool as hell! It's made of a heavier paper stock, so it feels like a file folder. It's also drawn to look like a Top Secret Dossier, with 3 claw marks cutting through revealing the insides. It opens up to show what's in the dossier. Good shit, man.
The issue starts off awesome too! Wolverine has some questions for Nick Fury, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., and decides he needs the answers fresh from the horse's mouth and so heads to where the helicarrier is docked. At the top of a building in New York City!
It's not Logan's style to make an appointment, and he has a point to make to Fury anyway, and so he decides to take his motorcycle to the roof and launch himself onto the bridge of the helicarrier! This is probably my all time favorite Wolverine moment. My pics aren't the best, but you can at least get a visual:
He dons his old costume, the yellow and blue (here's the differences):
This all represented a change in Wolverine as a character. Jean Grey even notices it. He's rougher around the edges, and more prone to violence than he was; also he's more of a loner now than he was before. The X-Men drop him off and Wolverine starts to investigate the warehouse, where he finds and fights the Shiva robot. It's actually a pretty vicious fight, despite the fact that it's a robot that Wolverine can just slice up. The robot just resets itself over and over again, becoming harder and harder to beat each time. We see that it's the Professor that's controlling the robot with a 3 button remote control. The buttons are labeled "CANCEL, RESET, DEFAULT". The warehouse itself turns out to be made up like a movie set, where a bunch of the "sets" look like the false memories that we saw in the last two issues. The fight takes them through all of them, meanwhile a stranger in a green hooded cloak sneaks in behind the Professor and Hines. It's Silverfox aka Madam Hydra! Holy Cow! She recognizes some of the sets that Wolverine and the Shiva robot are fighting in, telling us that she was, in fact, a participant of the Weapon X Project. She shoots the Professor, who falls onto a control panel, accidentally hitting the RESET and DEFAULT buttons on the remote control thus sending the Shiva Robot onto it's next target.
Wolverine stands, uniform tattered, in victory with a notable change to his demeanor:
The X-Men rejoin Wolverine and discover what happened to the Professor, Hines and find out the robot has moved onto it's next target: Sabretooth. Wolverine says while lighting a cigar, "Couldn't happen to a nicer guy... ...it's HIS problem now." Jean and Jubilee ask him about the other targets that they discovered on Shiva's list, but it's not Wolverine that replies but Professor X who ends the issue saying, "I fear, my X-Men, that the Wolverine that was reborn tonight may be a far, FAR different man than the one we have known. Heaven help us all."
Heaven help us indeed...
The Shiva Scenario storyline is resolved in the next issue, but it's not that great. We meet other members of the Weapon X Project, but they're not that interesting. It's much different now. Now, in 2017 we know that the Weapon X Project was actually an offshoot of the experiment that gave Captain America his Super Soldier Serum and that Deadpool was also a participant of the Weapon X Project, AND that Weapon X actually stood for the number 10, AND that X-23 (a clone of Wolverine) was what the Weapon X Project was actually trying to accomplish.
These 3 issues were published in 1991. I was 10. It was a ton of fun for me to go back to these issues this week and relive the memories I had of reading them for the first time. I'm now 35, married, and still dealing with mysterious medical conditions that require experimental tests and medicines. Along with my parents, Wolverine taught me how to be tough and stay strong in the face of such difficult circumstances and for that I am a better person.
So thank you, Mom & Dad, thank you Wolverine, thank you Larry Hama and Marc Silvestri. Thank you for the lessons learned, and the memories gained. And a very big thank you to everyone who has read this far! If you've been following along all week, maybe now you have a better understanding as to why LOGAN is a big deal for me. I am very excited for this movie, despite my hesitation. So be sure to check back here tomorrow for a full review! Also, Jimmy Nonas and I will be recording 2 new episodes of The Good Shit Podcast, a pre-show all about Wolverine and a post show Review of LOGAN! All will be available on soundcloud.com. Thanks again!
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